How long since I’d heard another person speak, who wasn’t a machine or a ghost or a dream?Oren—it could have been the name of any of my classmates back in the city. And yet it took only one look at him, the finely muscled shoulders, the wild eyes, the ill-kempt hair and dirty skin, to know he could never be mistaken for one of them.“You said it isn’t safe,” I managed. “Is it the shadow people?”“If you must talk,” he said in a low voice, “talk while you’re moving.”The pace he set was even more grueling than it had been before. Perhaps he knew that I couldn’t really talk if I was moving so fast I could barely breathe. Every now and then he’d dig in his pocket for that strip of smoked meat and tear a mouthful off with his teeth, causing me to shudder and look away.He didn’t stop often, and when he did stop he never spoke, just tossed me the canteen of water and moved away to scan the woods around us. During one of these breaks, the pixie hovered closer. “You should’ve eaten the meat he offered.”“A machine is giving me advice on how to make friends?”
